Wednesday, 4 December 2013

The
Second Afghan War (or Second Anglo-Afghan War) was the second major conflict
between the British and Afghanistan. It took place from 1878 to 1880 and
incorporated not only a crushing defeat for the British and a resounding
victory for the Afghans at the Battle of Maiwand, but also a much-celebrated
victory for the British at the Battle of Kandahar, or Relief of Kandahar, which
ended the war in 1880. The British were enabled to claim over-all victory but
they never managed to establish British rule in Afghanistan.(1)

The Second Afghan War was split into two
campaigns or phases, the first taking place from November 1878 to May 1879, and
the second lasting from September 1879 to September 1880 (2). The forces
involved on the British side were now under the direct control of the British
Government, which had by this time taken over the rule of British India from
the East India Company. As it had also taken over the old regiments, many of
the older men serving in the war had also seen service with the East India
Company’s Army.

Prelude to Conflict: British Lion Reacts to Advancing Russian
Bear

As
always with Afghan matters, the background to the conflict is complex. The
Russians were expanding into Central Asia. In the summer of 1878 "Russia
sent an uninvited diplomatic mission to Kabul."(1) The Amir of Afghanistan
at this time was Sher Ali Khan of the Barakzai dynasty, a son of Dost Mohammad
Khan. When the British demanded the Amir accept a mission from them as well, he
refused permission and threatened to stop any effort to send one. Nevertheless
the Viceroy of India, Lord Lytton, ordered a diplomatic mission to set out for
Kabul in September 1878. It was turned back on approaching the British India
end of the Khyber Pass. This triggered the war.

The First
Phase

Above: 45th Rattray's Sikhs with
prisoners from the Second Afghan War, 1878. “The three Afghan prisoners
captured in the advance through the Khurd Khyber are sitting in the centre of
the photograph, surrounded by Sikh guards. The 45th Sikh Regiment was raised in
1856 by Captain Thomas Rattray, and was popularly known as Rattray’s Sikhs. ...
The Regiment served in the Fourth Infantry Brigade, part of the Peshawar Valley
Field Force, during the Second Afghan War. The prisoners were lucky to have
survived because in the harsh conditions and terrain of the Afghan Wars no
quarter was given and prisoners taken, on both sides” -Wikipedia.

The
first campaign began in November 1878. The British sent in a force of about
40,000 troops, penetrating the country from three different points The major
battle of this period was the Battle of Ali Masjid. Much of the country was
successfully occupied by the British.

Treaty

On the
death of the Amir Sher Ali in February 1879 the British seized the opportunity
to make the Treaty of Gandamak with the new Amir, Sher Ali's son Mohammad Yaqub
Khan. The negotiator was Pierre Cavagnari, in spite of the name a British
officer and administrator who had seen service with the Army of the East India
Company.(3)

Cavagnari sitting with a group of Afghan tribesmen

The
treaty, signed in May 1879, ended the first phase of the Second Afghan War.
"According to this agreement and in return for an annual subsidy and vague
assurances of assistance in case of foreign aggression, Yaqub relinquished
control of Afghan foreign affairs to Britain. British representatives were
installed in Kabul and other locations, British control was extended to the
Khyber and Michni passes, and Afghanistan ceded various North-West Frontier
Province areas and Quetta to Britain. The British Army then withdrew." (1)

Uprising

As can
well be imagined, the Afghans were not satisfied with this state of affairs,
and there was an uprising in Kabul in September 1879. Cavagnari, who had been
given the post of British representative in Kabul, also receiving the Star of
India and a KCB, was killed along with the other European members of the
mission and their guards, members of The Guides, when he refused the Afghans'
demands.(3) This provoked the next phase of the Second Afghan War.

The Second
Phase

In the
second phase of the war Major General Sir Frederick Roberts "defeated the
Afghan Army at Char Asiab on 6 October 1879, and occupied Kabul." A
rebellion in December 1879 failed.
"Yaqub Khan, suspected of complicity in the massacre of Cavagnari and his
staff, was obliged to abdicate."(1)

British Install Abdur Rahman Khan as Amir

There
were several solutions the British considered but in the end they opted for
installing Abdur Rahman Khan, (more properly Abd al-Rahman Khan), a cousin of
Yaqub Khan, as Amir. The consequences of this decision, as we'll see when we
look at the aftermath of the war, were extremely significant.

Afghan Victory at Battle of Maiwand

At this
Yaqub Khan's brother, Ayub Khan, who had been serving as governor of Herat,
rose in revolt. In the Battle of Maiwand on 27th July 1880 he totally defeated
the British troops under General Burrows. It was "the biggest British
disaster, and the greatest Afghan victory" of the war.(2)

Ayub's next move was to besiege the
remainder of the British garrison at Kandahar. In response, on 8th August 1880
General Roberts set out with an army of 10,000 from Kabul to relieve
Kandahar—over 300 miles away.

The Relief of Kandahar

The
relief of Kandahar is one of the military exploits recounted in the book based
on Edmund Musgrave Barttelot's writings and published after his death by his
brother Walter:

Barttelot, Walter George, &
Barttelot, Edmund Musgrave, 1859-1888

The life of
Edmund Musgrave Barttelot, Captain and Brevet-Major Royal Fusiliers, Commander
of the Rear Column of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition : being an account of
his services for the relief of Kandahar, of Gordon, and of Emin, from his
letters and diary. 3rd ed.

London, R. Bentley, 1890

Barttelot
had a successful military career but his reputation in Britain was seriously
marred by his madness and resultant death in Africa. His name crops up in
several publications of the late 1880s and early 1890s about the Dark Continent
because he was one of the explorers in "Stanley's rear-guard", the
Rear Column of Henry Morton Stanley's "Emin Pasha Relief Expedition"
of 1887-1889. According to some accounts Stanley's own picture of this incident
was extremely prejudiced. Walter Barttelot's book was intended to defend his
brother's reputation.(4)

Several years before this tragic episode,
however, Edmund Barttelot was an officer with the 7th Royal Fusiliers in India,
and was thus amongst the troops who relieved Kandahar. "The march from
Kabul to Kandahar was quite a feat in that it moved so many men such a distance
and in a relatively short period of time. They marched through terrific heat
and dryness, not knowing what resistance they would meet on the way..."(2)
General Roberts's venture was, however, a resounding success. Kandahar was relieved:
"the day after Roberts arrived, on September 1st, he defeated Ayub Khan
and the Afghan army, effectively ending the conflict of the Second Afghan
War." (2)

A British Victory or Not?

With
the confirmation of the Treaty of Gandamak by the British Government's choice,
the Amir Abdur Rahman, the British retained control both of the territories
ceded by Yaqub Khan, and of Afghanistan's foreign policy, in exchange for
protection and a subsidy. They would no longer maintain a British Resident in
Kabul, it having at last dawned, after the successive murders of their
representatives during the First and Second Anglo-Afghan Wars, that this was
considered provocation by the Afghan people. This situation was generally depicted
in rosy terms by English writers, an attitude which is reflected in many modern
accounts, but this was largely spin. Maybe the advance of the Russian bear
towards the territory of the British Raj had been halted—but internal events in
Russia were fast overtaking Russian policies in any case.

"The Khaiber Pass. A village in the pass belonging to independent Afghans,showing tower and fortifications", photograph by T.L. Pennell

Aftermath oF War: The Reign of The Iron Amir

After
1879 the fate of Afghanistan was shaped by the new Amir, the British-appointed Abd
al-Rhaman Khan (or Abdur Rhaman, as contemporary accounts refer to him).

The Amir Abd al-Rahman Khan

The
Royal Geographical Society of South Australia holds several books about the
Amir. A close-up is provided by:

Gray, John Alfred, 1857-1929

At the court of
the Amir.

London : R. Bentley, 1895

John
Alfred Gray's personal account describes the court life in Kabul in the latter
part of the 19th century during the reign of the Amir Abd al-Rhaman Khan,
covering such diverse topics as "Life in Kabul"; "The Kabul
bazaars"; "Ethics"; "Afghan surgeons and physicians";
"Life in Turkestan"; "The birth of Prince Mahomed Omer";
"The rearing of the infant Prince"; "The Amir"; "The
Amir's conversation"; and "The Amir as an art critic". Dr. John
Gray was surgeon to the Amir for five years. He was only a young man when he
went out on his adventure to Afghanistan. Back in England he did a further a
medical qualification and settled down to a practice in the respectable London
borough of Ealing (5)—a far cry from the exotic opulence of the Amir's court!

Afghan Life in the Later 19th Century

"A Cavalry Shutur-Sowar or Camel-Rider", photograph by T.L. Pennell

Life for
most of the population was of course nothing like court life. It's not the
accounts of the explorers and soldiers, but those of the missionaries, which
afford us a view of how the ordinary people lived. During the 19th century
there was a stronger and stronger British missionary presence in the Indian
subcontinent, and by the later part of the century they had made tentative
inroads into Afghanistan—not an easy task on a merely physical level, when we
consider the terrain, and near to impossible on the theological level. Whatever
we may think today of these earnest proselytizers, they did make a genuine
contribution to the health and physical welfare of the people amongst whom they
lived. There are many testaments to such endeavours in the literature of the
British Raj and of the British Empire in general. One such in the RGSSA library
is:

Pennell, T. L. (Theodore Leighton),
1867-1912.

Among the wild
tribes of the Afghan frontier : a record of sixteen years' close intercourse
with the natives of the Indian marches. 5th & cheaper ed.

London : Seeley, Service & Co., 1913

Theodore
Leighton Pennell (1867-1912) was an English medical missionary during the 19th
century. His work took him over a wide stretch of the territory then known as
the Northwest Frontier of British India, in what is now Pakistan, and thence to
Afghanistan. His book Among the wild
tribes of the Afghan frontier abounds with descriptions of the lifestyles,
habits and customs of the Pushtun peoples of the area. Together with his
photographs of the daily lives of the people these accounts are the enduring
legacy of his work, and a valuable contribution to the social history of the
area.

"Women going for water at Shimvah"

Above is one of the few contemporary pictures
of women of the Frontier area; nearly all of the figure studies in the books on
Afghanistan and the Northwest Frontier in the RGSSA’s collection are of men.

Efforts
at conversion such as those of Pennell, nibbling away at the fringes of Afghan
territory, were never to lead to anything more. The Amir chosen by the British
was never going to allow his people to be converted—or, indeed, Westernised at
all.

The Iron Amir

Abd
al-Rahman Khan (or Abdur Rahman Khan), the British choice for Amir during the
Second Afghan War, was to reign successfully and firmly over Afghanistan until
his death in 1901, becoming known as "The Iron Amir."

"Abdur Rahman, the late Amir of Afghanistan: drawing by Lady Helen Graham"

Wheeler, Stephen, 1854-1937

The Ameer Abdur
Rahman.

London: Bliss, Sands and Foster, 1895.
(Public men of to-day)

Willcocks, James, Sir, 1857-1926.

From Kabul to
Kumassi : twenty-four years of soldiering and sport / by James Willcocks ; illustrations by
Helen Graham.

London ; Murray, 1904.

The
Amir was both ruthless and politically adept. Cruel episodes of genocide went
side-by-side with the cool-headed balancing of the opposing powers which
surrounded him in Central Asia. During his reign he completely consolidated his
position and gained dominion over the warring tribes of Afghanistan.

The results of their appointment were
doubtless not what the British had expected: far from being a puppet, the Amir
used the British government's annual subsidy of 1,850,000 rupees to import
munitions, and "availed himself of European inventions for strengthening
his armament, while he sternly set his face against all innovations which, like
Railways and Telegraphs, might give Europeans a foothold within his
country." He was a fervent believer in Islam, in 1896 adopting the title
of Zia-ul-Millat-Wa-ud Din ("Light of the nation and religion"); an
educated man, he published treatises on jihad.
(6)

It is perhaps not an exaggeration to say
that Amir Abd al-Rahman’s religious conservatism and fierce patriotism, both of
which prompted him to shun the West and its ways, in combination with the
militarism which had always characterised the Afghan dynasties, a tradition
which he continued and consolidated, moulded the Afghanistan of today.

Going
one step further, we might say that the current conflict in Afghanistan can be
traced back, not merely to the country’s tribal roots and endless dynastic quarrels,
but to the British choice of Abdur Rahman Khan as their preferred ruler during
the Second Anglo-Afghan War.